


Time of Your Life

by LaTessitrice



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 12:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTessitrice/pseuds/LaTessitrice
Summary: It’s a good day in a long string of good days. Truth be told, Max Evans doesn’t have bad days.





	Time of Your Life

**Author's Note:**

> For Candy & Milkshakes, though angstier than this event was meant to be. Hastily betaed by @queenrikki - my haste, not hers.

It’s a good day in a long string of good days. Truth be told, Max Evans doesn’t have bad days.

The afternoon sun has burned the fog away from San Francisco Bay, so when he sits out on his apartment balcony with his notepad and mug of tea there’s a blue sky overhead and a distant view of the hills rising up behind Sausalito. One day they might be able to afford a better view—actual water, or the San Francisco shoreline—but then Liz always teases that they need to move to Poet’s Corner, where the houses are low and trees obscure the view. 

She knows Max’s dream is to live in a Victorian, and they’ll probably have to leave Berkeley to get it. It’s another thing she teases him about: like him writing by hand instead of on a laptop. She calls him her old-fashioned gentlemen, but he’s learned how to ballroom dance with her so it seems to be old-fashioned in a way she likes.

He can take her teasing with ease. Anything to bring a smile to her face, to coax sparkling laughter from her like champagne.

This balcony has turned out to be a productive area for him. He’s written two novels on it since they moved in, and sold one of them. He’s not setting the bestseller’s list alight but it’s a steady income to supplement Liz’s paycheck, especially with how simply they live. It goes a long way at the farmer’s market, where he heads in the morning to pick up produce for dinner. Liz likes to refer to him as her house husband, with the way he does all the cooking and taking care of the apartment, though she glows with pride whenever she reads the reviews for his books.

He’s not capturing the feeling of home in his writing he’s been striving to since he was a teenager. But he’s working on it. The day he can say he’s been able to suspend how he feels about Liz in ink is the day he’ll have succeeded. For now, he keeps trying, pushing his characters through tests and troubles he’s never really faced in his life, leaving them chasing the home he managed to secure for himself so long ago.

His mug is empty, so he heads inside to set the kettle boiling for a refill. A pot of chili simmers away on the stove—his father-in-law’s recipe, solemnly handed over on their wedding day. Arturo had been worried that with them being so young when they married, they weren’t capable of taking care of themselves or each other. This was his way of making sure Liz didn’t starve while they tried to live on student grants, barista wages, and the occasional sale of a poem. Max had gradually persuaded Arturo to hand over many recipes in the decade since, but this remains a staple. 

Even if it’s far smaller than what they could afford back in Roswell, Max likes their apartment. Sure, it’s a 1950’s box, but the balcony makes up for the lack of indoor charm. Liz is all the charm he needs. He’s lined the walls in cheap IKEA bookcases, all of them filled to the brim and overflowing, and it feels all the cozier for it. They don’t need more than they have, and he’d rather spend their money on the things that count. Things like traveling: where books haven’t swallowed wall space, Liz has insisted on photo frames of their adventures, right back to that original road trip after senior year. Six weeks across the US, cataloged through Polaroids and an old disposable film camera, followed by other journeys: Canada, Mexico, Europe. 

Liz’s face smiles at him from one the of Polaroid images, right next to his own, her arms curled around him with the Grand Canyon in the background. It was when he’d first started trying to grow out facial hair, abandoning his razor when they left Roswell behind, and the fuzzy results made him cringe when he looked back at them, but Liz loves this photo. It had been the first one taken after he told her the truth: who he really was.

She’d accepted him, no questions. Well…there had been many questions, but that was Liz, rattling them off a million miles an hour trying to understand his physiology. None of his answers changed how she felt about him. Nor did they stop her accepting his spur-of-the-moment proposal on their way back to Roswell at the end of summer.

Nobody had approved—Rosa was the most vocal opponent, but even she’d come to the wedding in the end. Approval didn’t matter. Max had loved Liz his entire life and would love her forever. And because of that time he’d got a little carried away and accidentally forged a handprint bond with her when they were first becoming intimate, he knew she felt the same way. 

Their wedding photo takes pride of place over the fireplace. Maria Deluca took it, by way of a gift. Rosa found Liz a vintage beaded gown in a thrift store, an ivory that goes so well with her skin tone. She doesn’t wear a veil and her hair is in a simple twist, curls escaping from it to frame her face and neck. Next to her, Max is in a borrowed grey suit, his hair much shorter than he wears it nowadays, slicked back with gel and hope. His facial hair had grown in enough by that point that it didn’t look like the desperate attempts of a teenage boy, though to his own eyes now he looks drowned in the suit. Doesn’t matter. What’s clear from the photo is how happy they both were. That hasn’t diminished at all; not through three degrees, six half-drafted novels, and eighteen countries.

The kettle comes to a rolling boil and clicks off. Max goes through the motions of brewing his tea. This break has really been to allow his mind to work through a sticky plot point, one that wouldn’t be solved staring at a blank page.

A comment by a reviewer in a prestigious newspaper column recently suggested that Max’s writing is callow because he gives his character happy endings. He doesn’t see the problem—why take readers on a journey alongside characters, have them grow to love them like friends, and reward them with nothing at the end of it? Liz told him to pay the review no mind and to write what he wants. But this time, he’s been contemplating ending on a tragic note. What if there is no happy ending to be found? If he wants to be one of the greats, maybe he needs to consider showing that sometimes struggles are futile.

The break has cleared his mind. That’s not the right path at all. He writes to give people hope. He writes, however unsuccessfully, to provide a lifeline to people who need it, a shining beacon of everything that life, love and happiness can be.

On that note, he hears the turn of the key in the door. His own shining beacon is home.

* * *

The morning birds wake him, their timing ever cruel. The moment before he’d see Liz again.

In truth, Max doesn’t know what Liz Ortecho looks like anymore. He carries the memory of her face in crystal clarity within his minds’ eye, but that’s the face of a teenage girl who left Roswell ten years ago and never looked back. What changes time has brought to her, Max doesn’t know. Social media has its temptations but he’s resisted them, in the knowledge that he doesn’t have the right to seek her out.

Not when the memory of her face is tangled up in the blank face of her sister, twisted together by his own guilt.

Despite this, in his dreams he’s begun seeing a Liz that doesn’t exist, living a life with a version of himself that doesn’t exist either. A simple, happy life, the kind of life Max hoped for as a foolish teenager. Where his dreams have always been vague jumbles of shapes and sound, fleeting with the morning, over the last few weeks they’ve become sharp and clear. 

He sees Liz, in the kind of detail he never thought himself capable of imagining. He watches them share a life: he’s been able to do more than look at her at night, sharing casual, affectionate touches, kisses and caresses. Tumble into bed with her with all the accrued intimacy of a decade together, knowing her body as well as his own.

Other details linger from his dreams, making them feel as tangible as the real world. He knows how the pot of chili is going to taste. He’s never been to California, or seen the ocean, but somehow he’s able to construct an entire cityscape from nothing, the memory of salt and fog on his skin and in his lungs. If he was still writing his imagination’s sudden uptick in activity would be a boon, but he hasn’t felt the urge to put pen to paper for months.

He should be asking the question  _ why now? _ , but he knows why. This is a fresh form of his guilt, tormenting him with what might have been. A decade ago they’d been making plans to leave Roswell together and go on that roadtrip. This is his imagination throwing in his face all that might have been, with barely over a month to go until the anniversary of  _ that night _ .

He wants to return to sleep, hoping that even if time has moved on in that other world, he’ll still be mid-kiss with Liz. It’s another way his imagination is excelling itself in fleshing out the details of how she feels, tastes, of the noises she makes. And because he wants it so badly, he’s locked out, condemned to wakefulness.

Instead he gives up, getting up and going through the motions of another day.

Those motions bring him to the Crashdown at lunchtime, nursing a coffee he won’t drink. Arturo is too busy to talk to, but Max won’t ask about Liz this time. The words feel too heavy when it’s so close to that day. 

He doesn’t order any food but he swears he can taste chili as he leaves. He wonders if Arturo would have been the amenable father-in-law he seems to be during the night.

All Max wants is to make it through the day until he is tired enough to go home and sleep. He doesn’t want to have to wear the mask that helps him pretend he is fine. And yet, here Isobel is outside the Crashdown, making a beeline for him.

The mask goes on. He wonders if she will ever notice.

“That’s weird,” Isobel says as she approaches. “I haven’t been here in ages, but today of all days…” She drifts off, shakes her head.

“What do you want, Isobel?” He sounds as tired as he feels, even to his own ears.

“Lovely to see you too. Maybe I just wanted to say hello to my brother in passing since he never seems to go anywhere or do anything these days?”

Max flinches. He’s been going out less and less, turning down the invitations he’s always accepted out of obligation, out of the need to pretend that his world hasn’t shrunk to a little patch of gray disinterest. “I’ve been busy.”

“No you haven’t. And I need your help as a volunteer to decorate the school reunion.”

Now Max really regrets getting out of bed. “I don’t remember volunteering.”

“I’m organizing it, of course you’re helping me.” But she’s distracted, her gaze flicking back to the Crashdown behind him. She absently plays with the wedding band on her finger. He’s never seen her do that before. “Do you remember Liz Ortecho?”

Max stiffens. He hasn’t mentioned her name in years. Isobel definitely hasn’t. “Of course I do,” he says between gritted teeth.

“I had the weirdest dream a few nights ago. She was in it.” Max doesn’t ask for more details, but Isobel volunteers them anyway. “I wasn’t married, but you were. To her.”

Max holds his breath.

“It was so vivid,” she continues. “Like, you weren’t even here in Roswell anymore, but I was. Alone. I didn’t like it.” She shakes her head, as if shaking the feeling away. “As if you’d ever abandon me like that.” She smiles at him and it’s all he can do to force a smile in return.

She’s right. He wouldn’t. Even if it meant giving up Liz.

When he continues on his way, climbing into his cruiser for an uneventful tour of the city, he isn’t unduly concerned about the similarity of his dream to Isobel’s. If it was anyone else, sure, but they have the twin connection. They’ve never spoken about their dreams before, but is it so strange for their dreams to blend together at night?

This new dimension should make him feel guilty. In this dream reality he is forcing Isobel to be lonely, abandoned in Roswell—though why his imagination doesn’t have her finding Noah, he doesn’t know. But these are only dreams. In the daylight, she has Noah. She has Max and Michael, and she is loved. Max doesn’t have that.

If he has to chase it at twilight, he will, Isobel be damned.

* * *

There are no bookshelves in the bedroom. Liz’s rule, although it doesn’t stop Max’s nightstand being stacked with a precarious pile of them, each bisected by receipts and ticket stubs and whatever else was to hand when he needed a bookmark. Liz’s nightstand is neater, even if it’s not exactly neat: she has her own disheveled collection of papers; the case for her mouthguard; baby wipes; lube.

He’s propped up against the headboard reading while she brushes her teeth in the en-suite. He gets glimpses of her as she paces: hair tied up in a loose bun, a camisole and pajama pants that speak more to comfort than enticing him. Not that it takes much to entice him, and knowing Liz is comfortable around him only adds to that effect.

He waits for her to finish spitting and rinsing, flicking off the overhead light so she’s lit only by the glow of the bedside lamp. She clambers into the bed beside him, burrows into his side. He can read like this, with her head resting on his shoulder, as they first discovered on the senior year road trip. Something about him being awake and reading helps soothe her to sleep. They’ve never figured out why, but it’s the same for Max, who struggles to sleep any other way these days. The times she’s gone off to conferences to present her research, he’s had to return to Roswell to spend time with Isobel, because being alone in their home without Liz’s presence is the opposite of soothing. They have a rhythm and being without her throws it off.

“Max,” Liz murmurs into his chest.

Evidently tonight she doesn’t intend on going straight to sleep.

“Hmmm?” He closes his book, marking his place with a fridge magnet they bought in Mexico City, and places it on the nightstand.

“Do you ever wonder about starting a family?”

She must be able to hear his heart pounding. He’s wondered. Of course he’s wondered. 

“We don’t know if that’s possible,” he says gently. It’s why he’s never dared raise the subject before.

“I think it’ll work,” she replies, raising her head so she’s looking at him. Big brown eyes, glowing in the lamplight. “I’ve looked at our DNA and there’s no reason to think it won’t.”

He chuckles. He can’t help it; of course Liz has done the research before coming to him. “Is that so?”

“I think if we can conceive, then the pregnancy should be viable. Conceiving may be the hardest part.” Her expression turns playful. “But also the most fun.”

He can’t argue with that.

* * *

Max’s mood is more sour than usual. He’s felt fragile since he woke up, like he’s on the verge of a meltdown: he doesn’t know if he wants to cry, or throw things, but being around his brother isn’t the best way to find out which it will be.

If only he’d not been taking the first step towards creating a family with Liz when he woke up.

Michael hasn’t been arrested for a few weeks and it’s making Max concerned. Even Isobel has commented that he seems to be preoccupied, going to the Pony less (because it turns out Isobel keeps tabs on Michael too). 

When he emerges, it’s not as bad as it could be. He’s not in the drunk tank. He isn’t being ticketed. No, he seeks Max out, something that hasn’t happened in years.

His voluntary presence in the sheriff’s office draws stares from everyone when he saunters past the front desk. 

“You don’t have any outstanding warrants,” Max tells him when Michael reaches his desk.

“I know. If I did, I wouldn’t be here,” Michael replies, like he’s talking to an idiot.

“Then why  _ are _ you here?”

Cam’s out patrolling and the Sheriff is in her personal office so they actually have privacy. Nevertheless, Michael lowers his voice to barely above a whisper.

“You wouldn’t happen to have been having weird dreams?”

The pencil in Max’s hand snaps in two.

“What have you done?”

* * *

Liz is sleeping in this morning. It’s the weekend and without an alarm set, she will doze for hours. It’s always tempting to stay curled up with her, but Max gets restless too easily, so he’s up making pancakes. Hopefully the smell will entice Liz to emerge from her cocoon.

He plates up and sits himself down at their tiny dining table. It’s next to the kitchen wall, right below a set of photos from their youths: Liz and Rosa’s  _ quinceaneras _ , Max and Isobel with the family dog, Max and Isobel and Michael out in the desert the year before they graduated high school. Michael has a guitar in his hand and a smile on his face. It’s a rare photo of him, and a rare example of him smiling. Possibly the last time Max ever saw him this way.

All Max knows is that something happened to Michael at the end of high school, something that left his hand mangled and his hope in tatters. He turned his back on humanity, preaching to his siblings that there was nothing good to be found on Earth, and sought comfort at the bottom of bottles of whiskey and acetone. The two only seemed to curdle his bitterness and there was nothing Max could do or say to reach him. No, Michael had taken Max’s happiness with Liz as a personal affront and walked away from him.

Max hasn’t seen Michael for a few years: not since he was arrested for credit card fraud. The charges were shaky but Michael had nobody to bail him out or pay for a decent lawyer, so off to the state penitentiary he went. Isobel visits him in there sometimes, but Max isn’t welcome. Michael’s sentence keeps getting extended because he can’t stay out of fights, though he’s managed to evade suspicion of being an alien. Probably because people don’t know he’s from Roswell and don’t associate him with the legend. 

Liz pads into the living room wearing one of Max’s t-shirts, which hits her at mid-thigh. “Those smell amazing.”

She hasn’t brushed her teeth yet so kisses his forehead rather than his mouth, not that Max cares. She grabs her plate and sits opposite him, digging in with relish.

“I’ve been thinking,” he ventures. “We could get a dog. You know, if the baby thing doesn’t work out. I know it’s not the same, but a dog would be nice.”

Max likes dogs, and they always like him. He thinks he wants a dog even if the baby thing  _ does _ work out.

Liz smiles sympathetically and covers her hand with her own. “It’s going to work out. One way or the other.”

* * *

“What do you mean ‘alternate universe’?”

Michael sighs. “It’s complicated if you aren’t already into multiverse theory and—” 

“I don’t need the physics explaining to me,” Max cuts in. “I need you to explain why you think I’m experiencing one when I sleep.”

Michael holds his hands up sheepishly. “So I  _ may _ have been collecting spaceship pieces in my trailer, and I  _ may _ have recently been experimenting a little with quantum mechanics using subpar equipment.”

“In your airstream.”

“Yeah.”

“And you started having these dreams yourself?”

Michael shoves his hands into his pockets. “Can’t say they were much fun.”

“No. You’re in prison there.”

“Anyway, I’m working on untangling it all so it’ll go back to normal real soon.”

That’s the last thing Max wants. “No,” he says, too sharply and too quickly. Michael’s puzzled frown demands more of a response. “No more experimenting. If this is bad as it gets, I can live with it. I don’t want you making it worse.”

Nor does he want his nights with Liz snatched away from him. Not now he knows how real they are. It’s not his reality, but it’s one he’ll willingly disappear into for as long as he can.

“I know what I’m doing,” Michael protests.

“Clearly you don’t. Leave it alone.”

All Max needs is time. Time with Liz. Time in the life he should have had.

* * *

Max hasn’t felt the twin connection to Isobel for years. Somewhere along the way they’d stopped using it, long before Max left Roswell.

It comes screaming back at the most inconvenient time. Liz is unwrapping a trio of pregnancy tests, ready to find out if their first month of baby-making was successful or not.

And Max is on his knees, groaning with the surge of pain that runs through his head.

Liz is in front of him immediately. “Max! Max, are you okay?”

“Isobel,” he pants out, and Liz scrambles for the phone, dialing his parents.

It doesn’t take long to get an answer. Isobel has been hospitalized. It’s unclear why: his mother is hysterical, in a way he’s never heard her become. But Max is booking flights back to Roswell, ready to find out what’s going on. 

Liz can’t come with him. She has to stay and work—her project is at a delicate stage.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” he tells her.

“I won’t use the tests until you return,” she promises.

* * *

Isobel is waiting for him outside the Crashdown. There are dark circles under her eyes and she holds her left hand like it’s heavy, rubbing at her wedding ring.

“Did you see it?” she asks. “When you were dreaming?”

“What happened?” When he woke up, he was still on his way to Roswell, having only just said goodbye to Liz.

“I couldn’t bear it,” she says. “No Noah, no Michael, no you. What a horrible reality.”

Max can’t agree. “So the other Isobel—”

“It wasn’t the other Isobel. It was me. She put a mask on her loneliness and went on like it wasn’t killing her, so I made her do something about it. To bring you back.”

He staggers back, as if she’s actually punched him rather than done it verbally. “What?” He shakes his head. “We can’t influence—”

Isobel squares her shoulder. “I can. My powers are mental. I found a way.”

How does Max even begin to explain what Isobel is interrupting? “That’s not our world, Isobel. We have different lives—we can’t interfere in them. You have a good life  _ here _ . You should focus on that.”

“What good does that do me if the other one haunts me when I’m awake?”

“How can you say that? We aren’t killers in that reality. Isn’t that better?”

He’s never been able to figure out why, what the little differences were that made all the difference. No camping trip when they were fourteen meant Isobel didn’t have blackouts, and for some reason that meant Rosa Ortecho never died. Isobel’s loneliness seems like a small price to pay for that, compared to a universe where Max is a killer and still has to bear his guilt alone.

“No,” Isobel insists. “I hate it. If I have to keep going back there, I’m going to do everything I can to keep you in Roswell with me. Even if I have to get inside your head and make you stay. I can’t cope alone, Max. Not when I know what I could have had.”

* * *

“Isobel’s okay,” Max says to Liz down the phone. “Sedated. She didn’t mean to harm herself, they think it was accidental.”

“That’s good. Though she can’t have been doing all that well—”

“No, I know. Mom and dad haven’t noticed anything, but…” It’s Isobel, and it’s his mother. Neither are very emotionally available people.

“Stay as long as she needs you,” Liz urges.

“I need  _ you _ .”

“I need you too. But you’ve always been good about me running off to help Rosa. It’s your turn.”

* * *

Max knows what he needs to do, for the sake of the other Max. But even hearing her voice over the phone is like a hit of opium. As much as the other Max relishes any form of contact with his Liz, it’s nothing to what Max feels in this reality. He’s been denied her for years and every morsel, every scrap she throws his way, is a slow drip of what he needs through his veins.

How can he give her up?

* * *

Isobel isn’t responsive in the hospital. He sits with her a while, holds her hand, strokes her hair, but she doesn’t wake up.

Does she dream of her life in the other Roswell, where she has a husband and her family around her?

* * *

Seeing Isobel persuades him. In both realities she’s not in a good way, and only one person seems to know how to fix it. 

Michael is hard to pin down, even if he supposedly lives and works in the same place, so Max leaves him a voicemail.

“Do what you need to do to make the dreams stop, Michael. For Isobel’s sake.”

* * *

“Max?” Liz’s voice is soft, happy. “I know I said I wouldn’t use the tests—and I haven’t!—but you should know I’ve been feeling kind of nauseated today. And yesterday. And the day before that.”

“And you’re excited about that?” he teases, but he can feel a bubble of happiness rising within his own chest. “Isn’t it a little early—”

“Not necessarily.”

He pauses. “Take the test, Liz. There’s no point waiting until I come home.”

“Okay. I’ll call you back when I know.”

It feels wrong, sitting outside Isobel’s room, almost vibrating with happiness, but he can’t help it. He has a good feeling about this.

* * *

He’s wrenched awake. It’s the middle of the night and there’s no reason for him to be awake, but he is, and he feels adrift, like he’s been cut off from something.

His phone blinks on the nightstand. A message from Michael.

_ Fixed it. _

Liz is gone. The other universe is lost to him.

* * *

He hadn’t thought it possible for this universe to feel more barren to him until this morning. The desert dust is ash under his boots, the rolling emptiness around his home a valid reflection of what he feels inside.

He’s on a later shift, doing traffic stops on the highway, and he knows despite the Sheriff’s best efforts they’ll probably have unwelcome company park up with them. First, he has to go to the warehouse the school reunion is being held in and lug boxes and tables around for Isobel.

Her dark circles are gone. The spring in her step has returned. 

He made the right choice.

Later, on the dark highway armed with a torch and his weariness, he indicates for a car with Colorado plates and a broken light to pull over. Gets hit with a mouthful of fire.

And then there she is.

“Liz.”


End file.
